Why is the bank balance never correct? (Not slightly off - the bank balance has been EXACTLY the same for six months, off by 500% or more). reconnecting doesn't fix it.

Hello there, Kyle.

Transactions in the For review tab don't affect your balances. Categorizing and adding transactions only affects your QuickBooks balance, not the bank balance. Bank Balance is the actual balance from your bank account, updated with the last bank feed.

To ensure that everything is up to date, let's perform a manual update of your bank feeds. This will refresh the connection between your bank and QuickBooks. Here's how:

1. From the Banking tab, select Banking.
2. Click Update.

I also suggest checking your bank's website for any notifications regarding maintenance or any changes in your account.

If the problem persists, I suggest reaching out to our Technical Support Team. They'll be able to access your account in a secure environment and create an open ticket for investigation. 

If the issue persists, kindly contact our Technical Support Team. They can access your account in a secure environment and create an open ticket for investigation.

In the meantime, you can manually upload your transactions to QuickBooks if you need to work on your records as soon as possible. 

Once the entries are in, we can start categorizing them for your books and reconcile your accounts to ensure they match your bank statements.

I'll be sure to return to this thread if you have further queries or need assistance with your transactions. Simply leave a comment below for a prompt response. Have a good one.

The whole point of the problem is that hitting "update" doesn't update the correct balance. The actual bank balance is never properly loaded. No action or refresh will get quickbooks to update the actual balance from the bank feed. Transactions are imported, but the actual balance is drastically wrong and never updates.

I'll reach out to technical support again, but have been told to reconnect the account, which doesn't fix the issue.

I hope this helps anyone experiencing issues with uncleared balances. This may also resolve discrepancies between the QuickBooks balance and the bank feed balance for your accounts. I discovered this fix in an unconventional way. Please bear with me as I explain the steps to my discovery.

After reconciling all my accounts, I noticed that the QuickBooks balance was significantly different from the bank balance. This was alarming, so I started searching online for answers. Unfortunately, there was no straightforward solution. I pieced together information from various sources and attempted to resolve the discrepancies, but it was a dead end. Finally, I considered the transactions themselves and how the automatic pairing and suggestions functionality worked.

In my case, there was a transfer between two accounts. QuickBooks Online pairs transactions based on similarities, such as date, amount, and type of transaction downloaded from the bank feeds. Like many users, I confirmed the transfer in one account and then confirmed the same transfer in the other account. This is where the trouble begins. Confirming in both accounts creates WHAT APPEARS TO BE duplicate transactions in each register. What actually happens is that the transaction in your registry will show two line items with the same dollar amount. The one with the “C” is the paired transfer, the one right underneath it that does not have a “C” is the expense that was created when you confirmed the transfer in the other account. Check this out. If you click on the transaction before confirming, you'll see a small print that says, "WHEN YOU CONFIRM, WE'LL RECORD THIS TRANSFER GOING IN AND OUT, SO YOU'LL SEE THE IMPACT IN BOTH BANK ACCOUNTS." This can cause issues if you confirm the transfer in both accounts.

Through trial and error, I found the solution:

1. If you have transactions downloaded from your bank feed that are transfers between accounts and are paired by QuickBooks, confirm only one of the transfers. QuickBooks will automatically record it for the other account.
2. Then, go to the other account and find the paired transfer. You'll see it categorized as an expense. If you click to confirm it, QuickBooks will record it as an expense, creating a duplicate entry. This discrepancy affects your QuickBooks balance.
3. To prevent this, click on the transfer and select "Match." A new window will open, hopefully showing the other confirmed transfer. If it is not the right match in terms of date, amount, etc., click "Find another match" and select the correct transfer.
4. Then go back to each accounts register that the transfer took place and manually mark the item from "C" to "R" if you have previously reconciled the transaction.  I would recommend not doing a bunch of these all at once because some have different dates. It would be best you do process these one at a time.

Refreshing your page helps QuickBooks update so that you can see any changes that took effect.

Shortly after I posted this, someone at Quickbooks must have fixed the issue. The problem wasn't any differences relating to transactions. Quickbooks simply wasn't updating the bank balance (the balance stayed static for 8 months, despite transactions). Now it does. 

It turned out to be a clear Quickbooks error. The balance wasn't misconfigured due to transactions, etc. It didn't change for 8 months. It simply wasn't updating from the bank feed, no matter how many times I reconnected. Then I posted this, and it was fixed within 24 hours, and now updates.